


What was it all for?

by captainhurricane



Category: Metal Gear, Metal Gear Solid
Genre: Gen, If You Squint - Freeform, bb/kaz, major phantom pain spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 09:35:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4782521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainhurricane/pseuds/captainhurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you are dead on the inside, nothing hurts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What was it all for?

**Author's Note:**

> Massive, massive spoilers for the ending. DOn't say i didn't warn you. I'm still trying to get my thoughts in order about this game and what it did to my favourite characters. Especially Kaz.

After it is all done, after the truth bleeds out and Kaz’s ears go deaf from the pain, he finally makes the decision. It breaks his heart but in a way his heart was broken a long time ago. 

Should he have known that the man in front of him wasn’t the same one? How could he have- this one has all of his mannerisms, the deceitful gentleness in his voice and the scars from the scars. Yet it’s not him. This isn’t the one Kaz shared MSF with, the one he pulled to the chopper and watched the life go out from his face. 

“I can’t.” 

That’s what he says, to the empty air around himself and the steady echo of the soldiers’ footsteps. 

“I can’t.” 

It breaks his heart, oh, it does. 

But his heart is a shriveled, deceitful, useless thing and he doesn’t need it anyway. He speaks with anger, watches how the nonchalant expression on Ocelot’s face never changes and hates him, wants to wrap his fingers around that scarf-hidden throat and squeeze. 

“One day,” Ocelot promises. His spurs cling. He clicks his tongue, watches the sky. Like always waiting for their boss to return.

“One day,” Kaz promises. He squeezes his cane harder. It’s getting tougher to see, the figure of Ocelot in front of him getting dimmer. 

One day death will meet both of them and it will wear a friend’s face. 

x

x

Kaz departs. Ocelot stays. Those are stormy, rainy days and the Diamond Dogs live and die and live and die. Big Boss builds and gathers his army far, far away, whatever remained of the man before all but lost now. 

Kaz does good on his promise and keeps the ever-present phantom pain hidden when he comes face to face with one of the sons, the twin children of Big Boss. (Kaz had dreamed about John only once after the fall of MSF- in that dream, John had sat down with him and said nothing but his name. That John no longer exists). David proves to be much like his father but in the hard angles of his face lays a sense of humour, a delight to be taken in life. 

Kaz hasn’t shed a tear in years but when David turns his back, Kaz lets himself clutch at his chest and take two deep breaths, lets his fucked up eyes burn behind his glasses, glad for their existence for a moment. (Kept you waiting, huh? David had greeted him with that and for a moment Kaz could have sworn it was him all over again) 

“Master Miller?” 

“It’s nothing. Go on.” 

x

Kaz comes face to face with death and it wears a foe’s face. But Ocelot could have been a friend once upon a time, if Big Boss and his phantom hadn’t fallen upon them, cast his shadows on them and choked out everything else. 

Now I have truly lost everything, Kaz had said years ago. He knows he wears his pain like a sword stuck to his abdomen and it shows. He knows Ocelot had locked himself behind cold steel bars, the cruelness of his thin mouth never changing, his face hardened with age. 

“I would say sorry but you wouldn’t believe me,” Ocelot says. His gun clicks. 

Kaz sits down. His dogs howl in the Alaskan night. His pain throbs, the real one, the phantom one in the limbs he had lost years and years ago. 

(Somewhere, David crawls through a vent and the winter winds yell for his blood. Somewhere, Eli’s eyes gleam in the dim lights as they take in the sight of the nuclear monster.) 

He had thought about this, him and Ocelot making good on their promise to kill each other. Had wondered if it would happen in a firefight, under Big Boss’ thumb (once more) or maybe when they’re both old and shriveled and dying anyway. Yet it happens like this, when they’re not old enough to be in their deathbeds but not young enough to think they could rule the world any longer. 

It happens like this: in the deepest dark night, the radio playing an old David Bowie-song like trying to remind both of them of the good times, the better times when they thought they could rule the world- when Big Boss hadn’t turned his back and had still let himself live. 

They’re both older now, getting even older. Ocelot had never quite grown into his odd mannerisms, his guns, his silvery hair but he had gotten used to walking on the thin line between the good guys and the bad guys, each step of his boots on either side of that thin line. Kaz had only grown more bitter, the phantom pain forever haunting each move, each word. They had watched over the twin boys, over David and Eli and wondered which would grow up to be more like their not-father. 

Ocelot presses his finger on the trigger, doesn’t pull it yet. Kaz watches him, takes off his glasses. Ocelot’s figure grows blurry. 

“Not worth it,” Kaz says and turns his back. Ocelot’s mouth twists. If it’s grief or anger or just concentration, Kaz will never know. 

x

There had been a day, long ago when the sun had been high in the sky and Kaz had shouted his rage to the world. The Diamond Dogs had been his brainchild, his and Ocelot’s and Big Boss’. None of them had had a life outside of the base, outside of the family they had gathered: soldiers, murderers, criminals, law-abiders and mercenaries. The dogs of war finally unclipping the leashes that had been stuck on them by governments, by society, by the times. 

What a beautiful, beautiful lie.


End file.
